This comic volume is a compilation of stories about the Chicano homies living in Barrio Quien Sabe of East L.A. This comic was popular in the 1990s, and this is a new set of stories written by the comic's creator. This work certainly makes me want to seek the previous comics. This volume was a great read.


The four stories in the volume are:


Hollywood, the ever bachelor, decides finally to tie the knot with Gata. Mayhem ensues.
The local community center is getting a seriously bad budget cut, so the homies put together a lucha libre match for charity.
La Llorona has appeared. Who has summoned her?
Finally, read the story of the barrio's best car mechanic, who is quite the illegal alien.

The stories combine oddball humor, heartwarming moments, mucho corazón, and even a bit of wonder. There are moving moments and plenty of laughter inducing situations. I really enjoyed reading this one, and I read it in one sitting as it just drew me in.



The art is another great reason to pick up this volume. It captures the culture and characters of the barrio quite well. The art makes the comic feel authentic. It is also very colorful. For instance, I loved the art on the lucha poster.



Another interesting detail is the narration. The narrator talks to the reader as if you are an old friend not seen for a while returning to el barrio. It makes you feel warm and welcome.


Overall, it is a great read I recommend.

'Homies' by David Gonzales, Elliott Serrano and Andrew Huerta is a graphic novel with 4 separate issues and four separate stories featuring a lot of the same characters.

I remember the Homies toys in vending machines in grocery stores. I didn't realize that there were some original comics based on them, but the stories in this collection are all new. The stories take place in Barrio Quién Sabé. In the first story, Hollywood and Gata are getting married. It's probably my favorite of the four stories. The second involves a lucador wrestling against a local homie. The final two are about a ghost and a true illegal alien.

I liked the flavor and culture of the stories. They were fun and showed how much like family this community is. I wasn't as crazy about the art. It's busy and things have skewed lines all over them. The coloring is also on the dark side and feels heavy.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Dynamite Entertainment, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Four tales of friends in the barrio.

The Good: The storytelling was surprisingly good. Gonzales is a talented writer.

The Bad: There's not really a point to the book. It's just random stories. Nothing really hooked me.

The Ugly: Oof, that art. It was very angular and everyone looked like marionettes. It was hard to move past.

I enjoyed this graphic novel! It delved into the social dynamics of the barrio with strong character development that made for believable relationships of both love and friendship alike.

A fun graphic novel with a lot going on. Cool art style and story-line throughout.

Can I have that in English? Actually, forget it - it's fugly as sin.

It's time to review some graphic novels again! This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I was not sure what I would get out of this, but I was interested to learn. I'd never read any of the original work from the 90's, and now I have no interest in looking it up. Neither have I ever been to LA, but I do live in an area steeped in Latin Culture (it seemed like half the workplace was taking the day last Friday for Cinco de Mayo!), yet this book turned out to be a disappointment because it felt more like it was steeped in stereotyping than ever it was in telling original ethnic stories. The most striking thing about this graphic novel though, was that you could have told these same stories, almost word for word, and veneered them with any culture, and it would have read the same and not seemed wrong or out of place.
There's the wedding ceremony where everything seems to be going wrong, and in the end it's the love between the couple that shores them up. So what's new? This story has been told a hundred, if not a thousand, times before. It doesn't matter if it's in the barrio or in the ghetto or in the relatively impoverished circumstances in which I grew up: it's the same story, and that might have worked had there been something here which rendered it peculiarly Hispanic or even original. But there wasn't.

The artwork was curiously angular and not all bad, but to me it was nothing especially striking either. A lot of it felt far too busy and messy but others may well disagree. Cat and Hair (Gata and Pelon - hardly outstanding character names!) are the ones who are marrying, but Pelon looks like he's one of King Charles the First's cavaliers with that hairstyle and goatee.

The thing which made the biggest impression on me though, was caused by the severe angularity of the art. The white highlights on his face were rectangular, and when I first saw them, I thought he'd been in a fight and these were those little "butterfly" adhesive strips that are typically used (in movies and TV shows, but not in real life, it seems!) to hold small cuts closed!

The second story was straight out of Rocky (the original Stallone movie) where the challenger steps up and beats the professional and gets his girl. The only thing missing was that she wasn't called Adrian. Again, nothing original here, only predictable, and again other than the references to Lucha libre, there was nothing particularly embedded in Hispanic culture. The next story was essentially an episode of Scooby Doo with a ghost under a bridge - or is it really a ghost? there was even a dog. The last story was taken from X-Files, and not even really about Hispanic culture - more about refugees.

So I have to say I was very disappointed. Maybe the original 90's editions had more to say, or were more controversial or had some truly original thinking behind them, but I got none of that from this edition, and I cannot recommend this comic book.